*** Official Michigan lays the smack down on Notre Dame thread *** - Page 13

MyTurn2Raise · #**121** 09-18-2006, 04:22 PM

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Need I remind you, that michigan went to the #2 team in the country's house and smoked them. What else can you possibly ask a team to do? You claim michigan wouldn't be favored against all five of those teams, but why? What reason do you have to not think Michigan is good. I'm not saying they should move to #2, I'm not saying Michigan is definitely better than the top five SEC teams.

I'm saying Michigan has done all they could possibly do to show they are awesome. None of the SEC crushed top five ranked teams.

My point is, Michigan has maxed out, done all it could possibly do to show its awesome.

So, give some props. They may be better than the SEC teams. Maybe not. There is nothing more Michigan could do thus far in the season to show it's awesome.

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ND was also quite overrated. Remember, the Domers didn't beat a single team last year that was ranked at the end of the season. Because they are Notre Dame, however, they started as nat'l title favorites!!! Not Hindsight! [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]
To further explain-this is from Scott Hansen at Fox before the year started

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Cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame.

Wake Up the echoes cheering her name&#8230;

Easy to do these days, especially since Charlie Weis left his cushy confines as New England Patriots offensive coordinator for South Bend, waving his Irish magic wand whilst galloping into South Bend on a horse stolen from their rival Men of Troy out West.

Weis did a brilliant job in his inaugural season, no doubt. Weis brought the Fighting Irish faithful out of the woods in year one by leading Notre Dame to a respectable 9-3 record and a BCS berth. Usually the Irish are known for their brutal schedule filled with some of the top teams from all sections of the United States.

Look at this &#8216;brutal&#8217; schedule from 2005.

vs. Pittsburgh, W 42-21&#8230; the Panthers finished 5-6 and lost to none other than Ohio.

at Michigan, W 17-10&#8230; Michigan, much ballyhooed in the preseason, finished 2005 with an Alamo Bowl loss to Nebraska and a 7-5 record.

vs. Michigan State, L 44-41&#8230; the Spartans lost six of their last seven games to finish with a 5-6 record.

at Washington, W 36-17&#8230; the Huskies won only defeated Idaho and Arizona to award former Irish coach Ty Willingham with a 2-9 record.

at Purdue, W 49-28&#8230; another Big Ten opponent, another sub-500 team at 5-6.

vs. Southern Cal, L 34-31&#8230; likely the one game that brought them back into the limelight with a quality loss to a great team at home. It took Reggie Bush pushing Matt Leinart into the end zone as time expired to give the bitter rival Trojans the victory. USC used this victory as a springboard to a National Championship game appearance.

vs. BYU, W 49-23&#8230; The Cougars went 6-6 and lost in the Las Vegas Bowl.

vs. Tennessee, W 41-21&#8230; Give Notre Dame credit for scheduling the Volunteers. How were they supposed to know that Tennessee would have an atrocious 5-6 season?

vs. Navy&#8230; W 42-21&#8230; The Midshipmen had a wonderful season capped off with a Poinsettia Bowl victory over Colorado State and an 8-4 record.

vs. Syracuse&#8230; W 34-10&#8230; The Orange beat Buffalo last season and nobody else. 1-10.

at Stanford&#8230; W 38-31&#8230; another team from a BCS conference, another team with a 5-6 record.

vs. Ohio State (Fiesta Bowl), L 34-20&#8230; Notre Dame jobbed another BCS conference school out of a bid because Notre Dame is Notre Dame. Ohio State owned the Fighting Irish in Tempe.

Notre Dame played three teams in the regular season that went to bowl games in 2005, two of bowls named the Las Vegas and Poinsettia. You say paper, I say tiger. Man that is a brutal schedule.

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I made a similar post to this before the ND-tOSU bowl game. I think this guys stole my material.

Michigan crushed about the 20th best team in the nation whom they match up against quite well. It wasn't that unexpected---I saw McShay and Lugenbill on ESPNU both pick Michigan....that's a tough #2 LOL.

Michigan has some issues that would be exposed by the SEC teams I named.

Of course, Michigan is historically the most overrated team in the country. I'm not talking out of my ass. Why should this year be any different?

Going into this past week, Michigan was behind all 5 of those SEC teams I named in terms of sagarin predictor. Unfortunately, those teams beating up on each other will probably allow Michigan to move up. BTW, the same predictor only had ND at #10 despite ND's great first two performances.

Sure, Michigan is in good shape for a great record. But, that is only due to the big10 sucking tailpipe. Honestly, 10 wins are scheduled in...yay for them.

But, if I were a betting man, (and I am on college football), I'd love those 5 SEC teams verse Michigan.

Sephus · #**122** 09-18-2006, 05:12 PM

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Of course, Michigan is historically the most overrated team in the country. I'm not talking out of my ass. Why should this year be any different?

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that stat means little. teams that are consistently ranked highly in preseason polls should be expected to generally finish with a lower average ranking. for example if you start every season ranked number 5, even if most years you exceed expectations you're still going to end up being generally "overrated" because in a bad year you can fall up to 20 spots while in a great one you can only finish +4.

a team that started every year ranked 25 would be a virtual lock to be "underrated" even if it finished unranked 75% of the time.

MyTurn2Raise · #**123** 09-18-2006, 05:20 PM

that is the correct criticism of the method Sephus...good eye

My only counter is that there are many name schools that get rated highly every year and Michigan has been the most overrated of those name schools.

Sephus · #**124** 09-18-2006, 05:46 PM

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that is the correct criticism of the method Sephus...good eye

My only counter is that there are many name schools that get rated highly every year and Michigan has been the most overrated of those name schools.

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ok maybe [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

The Legend · #**125** 09-18-2006, 07:00 PM

I agree Michigan has been ranked high the last few years, and blew that ranking.

But need I remind you that this Notre Dame team did come very very very very close to beating USC last year. You can say they weren't so great last year, but that was a very quality loss.

And still, Michigan dominated them at home. ND also dominated a ranked Penn State team(who you also claim to be overrated)

Michigan has played more or less as good as a team possibly could. And you think they are worse than 5 SEC teams? yet these SEC teams have done not much to validate themselves getting any credit. They have dominated some cupcake teams. Tennessee had a great win over Cal, but barely creeped over Air Force. This somehow demostrates superiority to a team that dominated a highly ranked team?

So I got LSU, Florida , Georgia, Auburn, and Tennessee as top 5 SEC teams.

So what have we learned here?

The top 5 teams in the SEC are close, Georgia, Auburn, Tennesee, Florida, and LSU. These five teams have dominated a bunch of cupcakes(minus Tennessee, although they struggled against air force, if that means anything), and played each other.

So , from a national statepoint, you can't really compare them to Michigan. Michigan has dominated a team away that was highly ranked(though most likely not deserved).

Tennessee solidly beat a Cal team at home. But we can't judge how good Cal really is, just as we can't judge how good Notre Dame is at this point.

So from what it looks like, top 4 SEC teams look very good, and cannot be compared to Michigan at this point yet (As we don't have any games that can compare them).

From an outside observation, they have performed at most as good as michigan.

I'm happy with where the rankings are right now, I think 6 is fine. USC looks good, Florida and Auburn look good, West Virginia looks good but played no one so far.

The truth is, we don't have enough data at this point to judge who is better.

SEC has five great teams
Big Ten has 2 great teams ( Maybe Iowa is good, maybe not)
Big 12 has maybe 1 great team
Big East has 2 great teams
ACC has one great team
Pac 10 has 1 , maybe 2 (props to Oregon) great teams.

Where those teams stand against one another is TBD

MyTurn2Raise · #**126** 09-18-2006, 07:07 PM

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Where those teams stand against one another is TBD

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I'll concede this point....unlike college basketball, with shorter schedules, it's tough to every get a good comparison across college football conferences.

Even the bowls take place so long after the season there is a question of how they evaluate teams for comparisons.

The Legend · #**127** 09-18-2006, 07:15 PM

Yes, all I know, is I am excited. There is lots of great football to be played and lots of good teams, with no definitive best.

WLVRYN · #**128** 09-19-2006, 01:00 AM

I've stayed pretty quiet through most of this discussion about Michigan/ND being overrated, but here are my thoughts from a lifelong Michigan fan and alum.

To me, last year was an abberation with the injuries that we suffered (mainly to Mike Hart - take the best player off of any team for basically 5 full games during the year and see how well they finish), and the fact that we couldnt run the ball (again due to Hart's injury as well as Jake Long, our best offensive lineman missing most of the year) and thus couldnt protect leads late in games. Those late collapses built on themselves as the season progressed, and we lost our mojo.

I had a feeling at the beginning of this season that we could surprise some people, and if we even won one of our 3 big road games (ND, PSU and OSU), we had a really good shot at a BCS game. I still feel like that, but I know that at any given point in any given game, we could lay an egg (especially with Lloyd on the sideline).

We played just about perfect against ND (save for Henne's one pick), and ND was unimpressive in just about every facet of the game. We'll see just how good we are this weekend playing Wisc. If we kick the crap out of them, I may increase my expectations. We still havent won a close game, and I just wonder if any of the residual effects of last year's late collapses rear their heads when we get a close one. Its easy to say that Lloyd and the coordinators have a newfound aggressiveness, but its also easy to be aggressive when you are up by 20 points. I still think we'll end up 10-2 and in a BCS game. I dont think we can beat OSU right now (but our D was pretty impressive against ND), and we'll probably lose another stupid game along the way (MSU being my pick as much as it pains me to type that).

As for the SEC, while there may be some really good teams (I honestly cant say that I have watched much SEC football this season), when I see a game that is 6-3 between the two best teams, I have to think that something stinks. I thought the exact same thing after watching Miami-FSU, and both of those teams have been exposed as frauds. I realize that defense wins championships, but offense is important too, and if you cant put up more than 6 points in a game, you obviously have shortcomings. With playmakers on Michigan (Breaston, Hart, Manningham) and OSU (Smith, Ginn, whoever their RB is), whatever SEC team UM/OSU would be matched up against are going to have to score some points to win the game. A team that was truly dominant and one of the best teams in the country shouldnt win or lose games 6-3.

TripleH68 · #**129** 09-19-2006, 01:22 AM

Lloyd Carr under the gun this year? Here is the answer...

NEW OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR

Mike DeBord returns to the team in an attempt to breathe some new life into an offense that at times was incredibly stagnant.
DeBord was with the team during the 1997 season, serving as the offensive mastermind for a national championship squad.

NEW DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR

Ron English coached Michigan's secondary before becoming defensive coordinator.

RON ENGLISH

Age: 38
Hometown: Pomona, Calif.
College: California
Coaching experience: Michigan secondary, 2003-05; Arizona State secondary, 1998-2002; San Diego State secondary 1996-97; Arizona State graduate assistant 1994-95; Mt. San Antonio, Calif., defensive backs, 1993.

ANN ARBOR -- Ron English was a four-year letterman at safety for the California Golden Bears.

He knows how to play defense.

Since 1993, when English became a college football assistant, he has worked with every defensive position group.

He knows how to coach defense.

English, Michigan's first-year defensive coordinator, understands the nature of that side of the ball.

"Defense is a different breed of cat," said English, 38.

Coming off a disappointing 7-5 season, during which the Michigan defense was prone to late-game fades, English, who coached the Wolverines' secondary the last three seasons, is clear in his demands of the players this fall.

"If you coach them to do the things they're supposed to do every day, then you're going to have a chance to have a defense that can win championships," English said. "You can make that statement, but if they haven't prepared, it doesn't matter what you're saying."

"Those are the types of things we say to them. 'You said you want to be this, you said you want to do this.' It's an everyday thing. That's the point I'm making."

The point is English, a fit, tough and intimidating man, never lets up. And if he is to be measured as a coach and a teacher, he said, it will be in how his players respond to his message.

srjunkacct · #**130** 09-19-2006, 02:27 AM

Mike DeBord is a great offensive coordinator. His finest performance was probably the 1998 Rose Bowl versus Washington State, where Michigan completed two long throws for TDs (after Brian Griese had been touted all season as "a quarterback who doesn't make mistakes") and sprung a trick play on its last drive to convert a crucial third down (lateral to Charles Woodson, Woodson prepares to throw, everyone backs off to cover the receiver downfield, so Woodson runs the ball himself).